Observing Like a Scientist

 For our inquiry 'Plant Power' we have been investigating all about plants and trying to answer some of our questions.

How do plants eat?

How do they drink?

What are the different parts of the plant?

How do they use their leaves?

What are roots for?

We've learned about the process of photosynthesis and how leaves are like a kitchen: they mix the ingredients that a plant needs to make sap, their food. We also drew and labeled diagrams of leaves and the stalk of celery that showed us how plants drink and absorb water.

We have been looking closely at leaves with magnifying lenses. We discovered that leaves have veins like people do and the leaves look a lot like skin when you see it up close.

Here are a couple of interesting videos you can watch at home and talk to us about.

The Blog!

 As you are aware, the blog is just one of Worser Bay School's communication tools! This blog post will briefly explain what to expect from the blog.

We use the blog to give a deeper understanding or insight into how our teaching and learning programme works, the more nitty gritty! Seesaw, another communication tool that we use, provides more snapshots of your child's learning. The blog allows us staff to unpack the what, how, when, who and why with more detail. Thus, providing you with more understanding on how your child is learning at school! 

The blog also provides you with some more detail if you wanted to spark some conversations with your child about their learning. We know that sometimes it's a bit tricky to hear about what they get up to throughout the day after a big day of learning. At Worser Bay School we are consistently looking for ways to build that strong home-school relationship as we know it is so beneficial for our tamariki.

There are also tabs on the Tautoru blog that are very useful! Tabs such as links to support and ideas for learning at home, different strategies and suggestions for Home Reading and Spelling, NZ Sign Language links and the Library. See below for pictures of where these are found!

So be sure to continue to check out our weekly blog posts!

Where to find tabs on a laptop/computer internet browser:

Where to find tabs on a mobile device:

Launching into Inquiry

Today, Tautorians launched into our new inquiry about plants! We are beginning the 'I am exploring' and 'I am sorting and creating' part of the Worser Bay School Inquiry model.

We were each given a Little Garden League pot with seeds. We had to hunt for our buddies with the same vegetable or plant and tallied how many we had of each. Next, we might make some bar graphs to continue our statistics learning.

Then we got into the nitty, gritty planting stuff which included more Maths and some Science! We had to measure out how much water to add to the dried soil. It was fascinating to see the soil swell up as we added the water. So much great vocabulary and learning came out as the children observed the process like 'expand' and 'absorb'.

In the afternoon, we received a secret message from the Little Garden League! We had previously written applications to join the secret club so we were very excited to see they had sent us a message! We look forward to cracking more codes!

Make sure to continue to check out the blog and Seesaw to watch our little gardens grow and to hear about our learning.

Plant Power

 

Our new inquiry is looking into the Power of Plants. We started this week with generating some of our first ideas and questions we have about seeds, gardens, and plants. These ideas provide us with starting points for student learning and investigations.

We spent the afternoon, in the blustery wind,  investigating the gardens around the school. The seniors have been working hard on their green spaces and have a number of vegetables, strawberries and, luckily for the butterflies,  swan plants on the go. Their efforts are an inspiration!

Along with coming up with questions that we would like to investigate the students spent some time looking at the planter boxes that the Junior school will begin to plant and care for. There is a lot of excitement about what we could plant and also so many students volunteering to water, weed and watch out for seedlings. 

Here is a small selection of our questions.

Sharing our learning and progress

Student-led conferences are a time when we get to share what we've been learning, and also reflect on some of our learning goals for the year. It's a wonderful way to share how far we've come and also where to go next. There are always new steps on our learning journey. 

This year we taught our parents three different optimism strategies we have been practising in Tautoru. 

If you couldn't make it to the conferences, talk to us about these so we can teach you at home. Optimism is a great way to help us develop Positive Emotions, our Positive Education focus for the term. We will also post our Learning Goal reflections on Seesaw this week so you can have a look at home.

Here are some photos from the conferences. 

Silhouette Art

 Following on from our Arts Celebration, we have been making silhouette art using themes from our Matariki stars. We have been experimenting with using different materials to create a background, a foreground, and the silhouettes. 

First, we learned how to blend watercolours carefully to create a background. Then we created a silhouette foreground, and finally, we added our elements as shapes cut out from black paper. We layered these on top to add more effect.

We stopped to look at our works in progress before we finished. This is called "A Gallery Walk'. We got share ideas for improvements.

We got discuss and share ideas for improvements.

Here are some examples of our finished pieces

Come to our Celebration of Learning!

We have been gearing up for the Celebration of Learning that is happening next week! We are being goal setters by reflecting on our goals from the start of the year and setting new goals or steps to achieve them. We have also been having a bit of fun by role playing being each other's families to practise sharing our learning and goals! There were lots of giggles when we had to pretend to be another students family.

Check out some child-written invitations for the Celebration of Learning happening next week below. We are all very excited to share our progress and achievements!

Dear Parents,

Welcome to the exciting celebration of learning, "din, din, din". It is at Worser Bay School, "yeah!" It is going to be the best time of your life. The doors are opening. Come see the great learning we have been doing. Your mind will be blown to pieces. Thank you for coming, we hope you like it. It is on Tuesday and Wednesday.

By Violet

Welcome Worser Bay Parents! On Tuesday and Wednesday we have a time, an amazing time that you can come and see our learning. We will teach you about magical moments, power ups, character strength spotting and shout outs for the character strengths. We will see you soon.

By Marlon

To Parents,

The school doors are opening. Come in and see all of the learning we have been doing. So be amazed! Only on Tuesday and Wednesday,

By Glacia

Come on, people! Come to school on Tuesday and Wednesday to Worser Bay. You can see our amazing learning! We have been working hard.

By Cam

Please come to Tautoru at school and see our learning. I hope you have fun! See our work and our school. See you then! We are working on optimism.

By Otto

Welcome Worser Bay Parents. Something fun is coming up on Tuesday and Wednesday. We are going to teach you about what we are learning at school.

By Finn

Come one, come all! Come and look at the amazing stuff we have done. We have done Art, Inquiry, Maths and Writing! Just learning all of that stuff. The end. I forgot to say "by Archie", so by Archie!

By Archie

Here are some photos of us role playing and sharing what we have learnt this year.

Here a group are practising an optimism strategy that some will share, called magical moments. You need to close your eyes hence the 'helping your family close your eyes' action in this shot. You'll have to ask your child for more information to find out what it is!